


Between Lightning And Thunder

by Angel Ascending (angel_in_ink)



Category: Critical Role (Web Series)
Genre: Emotional Hurt/Comfort, F/F, First Kiss, Hugging, Prayer, Thunderstorms
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-17
Updated: 2019-07-17
Packaged: 2020-06-30 05:50:08
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,812
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19846900
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/angel_in_ink/pseuds/Angel%20Ascending
Summary: She was falling back asleep when lightning flashed against her closed eyelids and she snapped awake, breathing hard. Her first thought wasYasha, because how could she not think it, but her second thought was a memory of herself as a child, standing at her small bedroom window and watching the lightning dance across the sky as thunder rumbled in the distance.“Hey Beau,” Jester half-whispered, rolling over. “Are you awake?”Beau wasn’t in her bed.





	Between Lightning And Thunder

Jester wasn’t sure what had woken her, later. There had been a second when she had been almost not quite awake and thought she had heard someone yelling, but that happened to her sometimes, hearing weird noises just before she went to sleep or as she was waking up. For a moment she just lay in bed, waiting to see if the sound would perhaps repeat itself, but all she heard was the sound of rain on the roof.

She was falling back asleep when lightning flashed against her closed eyelids and she snapped awake, breathing hard. Her first thought was _Yasha_ , because how could she not think it, but her second thought was a memory of herself as a child, standing at her small bedroom window and watching the lightning dance across the sky as thunder rumbled in the distance.

“Hey Beau,” Jester half-whispered, rolling over. “Are you awake?”

Beau wasn’t in her bed.

Thunder rumbled loudly overhead as Jester stared at the empty bed, the bedcovers rumpled and half falling on the floor. She didn’t know why the sight had her transfixed. Beau had probably just gone to take a pee or something, and she’d be right back.

Lightning flashed again. Under her breath, Jester counted the seconds, like her Momma had taught her. However seconds there were between the lightning and the thunder, that was how many miles away the storm was. “One, two, three, four, five, six—“

Thunder again, louder than before. Jester wondered if the Stormlord was angry about Yasha being made all evil by Obann, and that was why it was raining. If the Traveler was ever angry or sad about something that had happened to her, would he make something happen? Something weird like snow in summer or rain that burned? But nothing had happened when she had been taken by the Iron Shepherds, so maybe not. Maybe that hadn’t been bad enough. It had _felt_ bad enough, gagged and shackled next to Fjord and Yasha, and then they had taken Yasha away—

The next lightning flash made Jester squeak loudly in surprise. From the foot of the bed, Nugget looked up at her, head cocked in concern.

“It’s all right, Nugget,” she said, giving the dog a pat on the head. “Go back to sleep.”

Nugget’s tail thumped happily at the attention as the dog put his head back on his paws.

Thunder rolled. Jester hadn’t been counting so she wasn’t sure, but it had _sounded_ closer.

“This is stupid,” she said quietly to herself. “Everything is fine. Well, not _everything_ , but Beau is fine. Probably. Maybe she’s just getting a snack or something. Or maybe she got lost, this house is _pretty_ big after all, and we haven’t been here for very long. That’s it,” Jester said as she got out of bed. “She’s probably just a little bit lost. I’ll just go find her then.”

The house was dark, of course, lit only by flashes of lightning, and quiet except for the rain and the thunder of the storm. Jester checked the likeliest places first, the washroom, the training room, the kitchen and the hot tub, before moving on to the library and the war-room and the happy room. She even checked the basement. She wasn’t going to panic and start waking up everyone, not yet, but when she passed Yasha’s room, she paused. Beau _could_ be in there. All alone. Being sad.

Jester knocked gently on the door. “Beau?” She half whispered. “Are you in there?”

Lightning flashed. _One, two, three._ Thunder clapped, leaving only silence behind it.

Jester opened the door slowly and poked her head inside. The field of flowers she had painted on the wall were varying shades of gray and white, her darkvision leeching them of color. Lightning flashed through the windows, restoring their vibrant hue and revealing an empty room all at once. It also drew Jester’s attention to the balcony door just as another crack of thunder almost made her jump.

“Of course, the balcony!” Jester said out loud. People stood on balconies in the rain all the time in her romance books, being all broody and angsty in between sexy times, though sometimes being on the balcony in the rain was what _lead_ to the sexy times. It probably also lead to colds, but authors never seemed to put that part in. Colds weren’t sexy.

“Beau, if you’re out there being sad, I’m here to drag you back inside for tea and a dip in the hot tub,” Jester said with a cheer she did not feel. She didn’t want to sound worried and sad if Beau was already sad, because then Beau might feel even _more_ sad about making Jester sad.

Beau wasn’t on the balcony.

Jester stood in the doorway, staring out into the rain, her heart pounding. If Beau had left the house to meet Dairon, she would have told Jester or left a note, and Jester hadn’t found any notes. What if she had been kidnapped or something? Should she wake everybody up? But what if Beau was fine and then everyone got mad at Jester for overreacting and waking them up? Maybe she should scry? Or send Beau a message? _Oh hey, Beau, just wondering where you were since you weren’t in bed, and I’m not lonely or scared at all not even a little, but are you okay?_ No, that was too many words. She could shorten it—

The wind blew past Jester, carrying the smell of wet earth and growing things down from the roof. The roof. The garden. Beau might be up in the garden. She would have had to sneak through Caduceus’s room in the tower to get there, but Beau was nearly as sneaky as Nott, sometimes even sneakier. And Jester? Well, she had a quick and easy way to get into the garden as long as she wanted to burn the magic for it, and right then it wasn’t even a question.

She envisioned the garden, the young tea plants swaying in the wind, the huge tree with lights hanging from its branches, and felt the magic the Traveler had given her rise to her need. One moment she was standing in the doorway of the balcony and the next she was standing in the rain, her bare feet sinking into wet earth as she was immediately soaked through to her skin. Lightning flashed closed by, blue-white and nearly bright enough to blind, followed by a clap of thunder as loud as a slap to the face.

Jester’s heart raced as she blinked the afterimages of lightning from her eyes, scanning the rooftop, trying to see through the heavy curtain of rain. She was just about to shout Beau’s name when she saw a dark shape near the trunk of the tree, someone kneeling. Beau. Kneeling.

Jester let her shout die in her throat as she crept closer, feet finding one of the stone paths that wound through the garden. Was Beau praying? Caduceus _had_ made little shrines for everyone who had a god, and he _had_ mentioned that he had made one to Ioun, and Beau had seemed pleased at the time. It’d be rude to interrupt maybe, but it was raining and cold, even if the cold didn’t bother Jester. She wasn’t even shivering as she walked up next to Beau, who didn’t look up. It wasn’t Ioun’s symbol she was kneeling in front of either, Jester realized now that she was closer. It was the Stormlord’s.

“Just bring her back,” Jester heard Beau say. Her voice sounded raw and broken, and Jester remembered waking up and thinking she had heard someone yelling. “She said you pulled her out of a literal hell, once, you can do it again. We need her here, with us.” Beau’s shoulders were shaking, and Jester realized with a start that Beau was _crying_. She couldn’t remember if she had ever seen Beau cry before, and oh, it hurt her heart to see it now.

“Beau?”

Jester had barely said her name before Beau was on her feet, fists clenched and posture tense before lightning flashed overhead, revealing Jester to her weaker human sight. All the fight went out of her as she released the breath she had been holding in a shaky sigh.

“Jester, fuck, you scared me,” Beau said, shivering. “I was just—“

Jester cut Beau off with a fierce hug, wrapping her arms around Beau and pulling her close. Beau’s skin felt absolutely freezing against her own. “I know,” she said quietly. “I know.”

“I thought maybe he would listen to me,” Beau mumbled into Jester’s shoulder. “But I don’t even know if he can hear me.”

Jester thought about Yasha and her struggles to talk with her god, how she had walked out of the giant’s lair and out into the freezing rain. She thought about how she had heard someone yelling as she had woken up. “I think he heard you,” she finally said. “ _I_ heard you.”

Beau lifted her head from Jester’s shoulder to look her in the eye. “Yeah,” she said softly. “Yeah, you did.”

Jester had imagined kissing Beau for awhile now, because why wouldn’t she have? Beau was beautiful and cool and she kicked ass and she was strong and she loved her friends, and her occasionally gruff exterior hid a heart that was softer than Beau herself probably believed. What she _hadn’t_ imagined somehow was Beau kissing _her_. Hadn’t imagined standing in the pouring rain under a magic tree in a rooftop garden and having Beau close that distance between them with her lips.

 _Oh_ , Jester thought as Beau’s cold lips touched hers, and it was like putting the last piece into a jigsaw puzzle, or sketching the last line in one of her drawings, completing the last brushstroke on a painting. She held Beau in her arms and remembered hugging her on the deck of a ship, remembered her telling Beau she loved her and thinking at the time that maybe she had meant that she loved her as both a friend and as more than a friend. She wondered if when Beau had said that she loved her too if maybe Beau had meant it the same way Jester had.

Thunder rolled in the distance, quieter than before, though the rain fell just as hard as the kiss broke and they pulled back to look at each other.

“Oh wow,” Jester said, and then she started to giggle, and Beau chuckled roughly, and they weren’t laughing at each other, but at the world that was a place where awful things happened and friends were taken away from you or you were taken away from your friends, but it was also a place where love could be found in the seconds between lightning and thunder.

**Author's Note:**

> So yeah, last episode filled me with the Jester/Beau feels, my multi-shipper heart was truly blessed. 
> 
> Fun Fact: I've literally been sitting on this title for over a year now, where I had it attached to an *entirely* different fic that's sitting in the abandoned file currently.
> 
> I'm angel-ascending on Tumblr and angel_in_ink on Twitter if y'all want to stop by and say hi!


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